Terrance Barkan, CAE, is chief strategist and business architect with GlobalStrat, providing professional advisory services for the not-for-profit community. Connect with him on LinkedIn or on Twitter at @TBarkan.

There is a gaping hole in the social media plans of most organizations — a lack of measurement.

A recent survey of nearly 700 organizations, including professional and trade associations, companies and government institutions, revealed that a.) the vast majority do not have a single person or department clearly in charge of social media and b.) nearly 90% have not allocated any dedicated staff or budget to social media.

And yet, all of the organizations surveyed are either engaged in social media already or starting their projects now. When asked, marketing, membership, communications and product managers all confirm that social media activities have been added to their plate, but they also confirm that nothing has been removed to make room for these new responsibilities.

The result is that organizations are allocating large amounts of staff time and resources to “test” social media in their organizations but do not have a coherent plan, no one person or department will be able to be held accountable (for success or failure), and because the social media effort is not organized, it will be nearly impossible to measure whether social media is driving results or not.

Because many social media tools are free or very nearly free, many organizations have the misconception that their social media efforts are also going to be “free”. The reality is that yes, the tools are nearly free but a successful social media effort requires planning, thought and management (people and resources).

It is relatively easy to get X’000 people to follow you on Twitter or to join a Facebook group, but unless there is a way to monetize this effort, it is not a sustainable business approach in the long term.

One of the answers to solve this dilemma is to start with measurement of your social media efforts right from the start, including setting a baseline from which to gauge your social media results. This means measuring all “touch points” with your members/clients, including traditional media tools such as direct mail. The good news is that social media tools make it very easy to measure and track your communications campaigns.

If not now, then at some point very soon, senior management of every organization is going to be asking two questions: “What is our social media strategy?” and “Is it working?” The key is to create your plan now and to include how you will track tangible, real results so that you are able to answer these two inevitable questions when they come.

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